Theo Verelst Diary Page

Latest: 17 May 1999

I've decided after good example to write some diary pages with toughts
and events.

Oh, in case anybody fails to understand, I'd like to remind them
that these pages are copyrighted, and that everything found here may not
be redistributed in any other way then over this direct link without my
prior consent. That includes familiy, christianity, and othercheats. The
simple reason is that it may well by that some people have been ill informed
because they've spread illegal 'copies' of mymaterials even with modifications.
Apart from my moral judgement, that is illegal, and will be treated as
such by me. Make as many references to these pages as you like, make hardcopies,
but only of the whole page, including the html-references, and without
changing a iota or tittel...

And if not? I won't hesitate to use legal means to correct wrong
that may be done otherwise. And I am serious. I usually am. I'm not sure
I could get 'attempt to grave emotional assault' out of it, but infrigement
on copyright rules is serious enough. And Jesus called uponus to respect
the authorities of state, so christians would of course never do such a
thing. Lying, imagine that.

May 18th 1999

I ran out of CD music, yesterday. The not to abundent day to day funds
I fell ok accessing have been accessed some months ago to do some intelligent
consumer acticity in the CD market, and I've got a set of mostly cheap
CD's that do represent major areas of my musical interests, but after using
them again and again, my ears get used to them, and I musically feel like
a installation I once saw at the Documenta (Kassel, I think it was by Newman)
that head big screens with rotating heads all crying out 'feed me' in different
but all urgents and fairly loud voices. I've got a radio, too, and I can
spend some phone time to connect to WBGO (NY jazz station) or Radio New
Orleans (though they unfortunately have an hourly repeating program that
changes per day), that both internet-broadcast some pretty decent music
at times, and I have a video capture with some clip channels connected
up to my ppa at one 'office' at the painting institute, but still, I need
my (John) Scofield, (Mike) Stern, (Larry) Carlton, and other fusion Collection
tapes and CD's. AND a keyboard, synth, piano, whatever. Soon.

To be honest (to use that expression) my interest for all that started
for similar reasons quite some years ago: I was sort of eh, bored, with
my pop music. Harmonically and rythmically done short, caught in the 8
and 16 beats with or without gated reverb, and (at that time) reayd for
some serious bleus stuff and more.

Some time, and fo rquite some time, I listened to gospel type of music,
of varying kinds, and honestly was bored with that, too, without even ever
thinking such a thought. There's some nice music there, for sure, some
even moving (still can), and some of it musically advanced or interesting
simply because its good or to the point, kind of like a well played blues:
no one can claim that a 12 bar schema that serves a large portion of all
bleus songs, and most of the others except some of the jazzy variations,
and a very large collection of rock and pop songs

E E E E
A A E E B7 A E B7

is complex, every decent musician can play that while chatting
about the wether. At least, its not a bad starting point to think that
way, without discarding other musical archetypes. Stil red house can cut
through veyr many things, and single chord boot-stamped blues with
basic but well chosen and times blues licks and scales and the above subtly
alluded to can cut through quite a lot, too, and generate / channel a lot
of feelings. Still can. And BB's (King) extremely recognisable lick type,
trippling around the blues scales does it, too. Even rock around the clock
does something. All around the same chord progression scheme. Even 'All
blues' does it, quite nicely at times, in fact.

In the gospel type of corner on of Amy Grants earlier albums (Vinyl,
at the time, carefully Dolby C recorded on good tape before the record
would loose its high end crispness), I forgot the name, pleased me, and
had at least some interesting songs on them for the harmonically not too
challenged listener, without having a high listening threshold. It had
sons on it like I'm gonna live like a believer, El Shadai, a letter, Fat
little baby, I forgot the title. Varying from rock over performance type
of (what excactly?) to classical themes and jazzy licks and edges. At the
time it harmonically and technically challenged me, which was interesting.
Just after that I tried to keep in sync with my RX 15 drum computer to
challenge myself rythmically (for years, in fact, it was a weak point),
which was good practice for a lot of more tightly played music later on,
and for playing together, too.

Still, I was happy to squeeze a (Pat) Metheny almost acoustic trio version
of all the things you are at very loud volume through my latest speakers,
to hear some variations in harmonics and rythms that at least aren't trivial,
and in case of this CD, appearently at some point even intrueging enough
for me to study a bit, because I likes the kind of steamy yet cooly-contained
drive in the song. Something similar holds for 'question and answer' from
the same CD. The kind of things I'd have loved to hear in the concert in
Andorra where Lisa and I had been planning on going to. In fact around
the same time was I was in Paris with Tal, I wanted to share the pleasure
of a nice fusion type of concert with an artist or band that I knew could
pull that off. There are various concerts of the kind where somewhere a
kind of magic (what a term) exists by well played music and solo's, and
the shared attention for that. hard to describe, nice to experience, definately
with more potential then the pop/rock concerts I've visited, of which there
are not hundreds, but enough to know. Though come to think of it, for quite
some time I seriously played several days a week, and saw (local) performances
about equally often. Fun.

Couldn't find a concert like that in weeks at that time in either Paris
or London. Instead I remember a fairly cheesy club performance there as
the best thing that could be found at the time. Not that I wasn't having
my hands full with her, but it would have added to what I'd have liked
to share with her. Come to think of it, with Andrea at least I visited
a semi traditional jazz band in a medieval setting: thick stone walls and
floor, combined in a sort of ballroom setting. With her a had a very good
time (although some things were tense) there in Bern, but you could have
recorded a horror movie by just dimming the lights. The band was at least
live, though not very special.

The bottom line could be that I just enjoyed those things with women,
but that is apertly untrue: in fact the music 'scene' (though I resent
that word) I played some role in in Delft for some years was male for a
significant portion. Though I vividly remember realizing I missed Josette,
first thinking it was just the music at some point. The combination just
makes it even better.

Of course this is from music consumption point of view, which is hardly
optimal for me, unless it can realy move me somehow, something similar
holds for music production, playing music, that is. The bands I playing
in/with that had lead (female) singers in them, would not have been the
same or even have existed without them, seriously.

It hust occurred to me that 'Don't try this at home' (Brecker) has an
interesting kind of folk-jazz fusion intro on it that I at some time could
partly play on keyboard, though it is done by violin. Strangely enough,
there aren't many piano/keyboard players in that musical area that realy
stand out, maybe Petruciani in some senses, of course Hancock evidently
did some interesting stuff, and there are others like Garner that are special,
but I never realy had a single good piano/keyboard/synth player example
in the fusion corner.

Thats no reason not to want to test my ppa with rocking pneumonia at
volume eleven in keyboardized verison as soom as I have one. Ha.

As a interesting, not completely unrelated thought: suppose it is possible
do disect the major mode of operation of the brain, in other words how
its major functions are performed, physically, logically, and computation-wise
(algorithmically as far as that term applies), does that immedeately give
us insight in the spiritual? I mean seriously, not the processing of music
and reverb with certain time intervals and tricks that are though to impresionate
the brain in certain ways, but seriously how brains can hook up together,
what 'exists' in the spiritual, and even more interestingly of course:
does this have anything to do with who some of us call God? I remember
brain research results from Cornell Univ. (NY) where they alledgedly found
a centre for religeous activity in the brain, as I remember it supposedly
was somewhere in the middle right bottom, a bit above and before the visual
cortex front side, though I'm don't excactly remember. I'm in the dark
as to how they that found that: did the subjects rad their bible, or pray
or something to heighten activity there? They measured by CT scanning (I
think) the head and somehow computing back where a (local) heightened temperature
could be detected, that was made visible in a 3d volumetric picture where
the active areas had different colours. In fact this was quite some years
ago, but the idea seemed interesting in a funny way.

The connection is that music has a lot in common with patterns that
exist found in the functioning of the brain. A fact for which I know no
references by heart, but I've encountered the observation various times.